Raising Hell and America
by ACDCgirl
Summary: A poetic tale of a family overcoming abuse.
1. Chapter 1: The Family

_**AN - So, finally let me delete the old version of this story (previously entitled The Long Face of Time), and I'm re-uploading a heavily edited new version.**_

_**For first time readers, this is a total Alternate Universe to my 'Little Man' story, although some things do remain the same...**_

_**Some things you should know: Klaine are married (obviously), Rachel is Kurt's sister, Cooper - Blaine's brother - is bisexual (this will become relevant later on)**_

_**This is a very dark, sinister fic - I have constructed a menacing, traumatic back story for each and every character. Be forewarned.**_

_**And enjoy :)**_

_..._

It had been a long many years, a simple few decades in which everything and everyone had changed. A space between pages, long-short years that had seen them lose and learn so much…

To begin, Kurt and Blaine had learned about love, how enduring it was, how it followed you around and wouldn't let you remain practical.

They had learned about each-other and the bond that they had unwittingly forged and would kill them both to sever.

They had learned that whatever the mistakes made, whatever the promises broken, love and truth will out – to whatever consequences.

So as Blaine and Kurt married - a union of two souls in a diamond encrusted city taught friends and family about faith and loyalty and companions that held on for life.

And Rachel – the invisible sister - her beauty blossomed, away from the entrapment of Men she was so accustomed to. Her life became an operetta, larger than life and she became the face and voice of every girl across the nation that happened to need one.

Rachel was her brothers missing appendage.

Pretty and warm.

He called her his rock, his swan, the feather in his hat.

And then there was Heebie, a new addition to the family, who had long ago learned how to sacrifice the gift of life and then go on with her own, pretending to have forgotten.

Heebie, who found Kurt, a strange man who wanted the woman and not just the womb.

And after Heebie had given Kurt and Blaine two children, they both learned – two times – that no-one ever really new the true agony of love until they became parents.

Kurt never before knew that beauty could itself be personified, first in his son AJ, then in his daughter Elizabeth.

And Blaine had no idea what a real Father felt like, let alone how to be one or how to make a signature mean as much as blood.

Both Blaine and Kurt learned that marital joy was superfluous and appeared automatically, like a fake photo smile, for the sake of the children.

And then there was Mallorie who was the Mother of two boys with identical twin chips on their shoulders.

Cooper and Blaine, who each hid their tears and scars behind dapperness and charm, respectively.

They were all squashed into the frame, a funny sort of family. Like children with children over those years. Years, that had taught them and hurt them and healed them so much.

They were ready for another hundred years together. Ready to carry with them all they had learned, about how children became caregivers, and hate became indifference and faith became love, how friends became strangers and parents and family became friends and friends never left, no matter how many times and ways in which you asked them.

They laboured under the weight of the long strange years that had already passed, the promise of a future that spread and matured still more every day and led them each back to a past that was in danger of overtaking them.

Each a painful past, a picture full of blackness, full of pixilation, a story they had only to share with one another to make light of forever.

And that is how they came to be by the fire that Christmas afternoon, listening to Blaine wrap them in reminiscences darker than the cataracts and the inkblots in the clouds above the diamond roofs.

...

**_AN - Please review, please review, please review_**

**_As always I am open to suggestions :)_**


	2. Chapter 2: Blaine's Demons

_**AN - Spent a long time working on this, I hope it was worth it...**_

_**Warning: contains graphic mentions of child abuse - proceed with caution.**_

_**...**_

It was lucky they ended up here, now, so lucky that this fleeting moment seemed to stretch on forever.

So, so lucky that they fit into this patchwork square like pressed petals… now their lives, so interchanged and interwoven, were one Polaroid picture, still foggy, still developing.

It was lucky; it had to be, as that entire fragile framework lay now with Blaine – creased and plaid and frowning, draped in "vintage" flannel, an old child's toy on the couch.

_"I hate him…"_

What a thing to say.

_'…My Father, the bastard…I just hate him…'_

The family were arranged neatly around him – Blaine was the protagonist tonight, in pride of place for the benefit of God peering down from above.

They were a tired little family of puppets with their strings cut, crawling and shuddering on this futile earth.

Spinning naked and blind – God laughs.

And the room was full of voices, pleading, angry voices, even as nobody spoke

Look back down the tunnel, Blaine.

Look down the tunnel of your youth and tell us what you see.

And give us answers Blaine, give us answers.

_"…Rachel, you look beautiful tonight. Did you know my Father used to beat me?"_

The words that would make her take his hand and sit with him under the spotlight – so he would not be the only one who felt on fire.

_"…He had me by the hair. This one night, we'd been shouting then all of a sudden he takes a grab for my hair…"_

Out of nothing, for no reason at all … AJ comes to sit beside him. Yes, he is drawn in by Blaine's words – but how did this boy who used to sit so small and wide eyed on his Father's knee become this? An almost man, so cold and striking – a shadow of beauty, focused only on himself.

_'Darling. My Darling.'_

There is only room on the couch for one more and Kurt doesn't dare touch his son.

AJ always had his Mother's eyes. The brightest, deepest, sizzling blue.

He has waged a crusade against his Fathers.

He hates them, he hates them, he hates them with a tireless teenage passion.

Perhaps this will change that.

Ah, but he is so beautiful, thinks his Fathers, he is so unfathomably deep and dark and frightening, an ocean of a boy.

If Kurt could just touch, just brush the hair he keeps so immaculately styled, just stroke the cheek, the skin that is clear and smooth.

Just hold him, feel his heart beat, feel him breathe, his life, his son.

But Kurt won't start a fight.

Wouldn't disrupt Blaine in the dark among his demons.

_"…Kurt…he hurt me. Dad threw me…against the wall…and my tooth…I never found it…"_

Kurt's tongue has made its way into that gap many times, he has found his way into that empty space inside his husband's mouth.

A space made bigger than it really is by the way he guards it.

Someone once said you could see it when he smiled.

So Blaine tries not to smile anymore.

_'…Coop – you should stop drinking…'_

No answer.

Cooper looks a frail old man on the couch, thin inside his robe, clutching a tea-mug in calloused hands.

It's all an illusion of course, under the robe are plates of steel flesh, greasy with foreign filth, inside the mug is hard liquor and it numbs the soul inside a body that became a shell countless years ago.

Cooper's fingers have been calloused by a hundred different men and woman all with the same face.

And Cooper himself is an optical illusion – if you look hard enough he turns into something else and you can never see him in the same way again.

All of this is transparent to Blaine.

And meaningless, all the same.

_"…Heebie, stay the night, Honey. It's too cold to walk home, it's too dark…"_

Heebie is the pair of lips breathing fog on the window.

Heebie is on the other couch, sharing her body with Miss Hummel's newest venture.

Rachel's baby will be just as beautiful as her.

Just as loud.

Another gift from Heebie – thanks to Kurt, who still won't let her leave.

Heebie has been a childless Mother so many times.

She prays every day to keep living this impossible dream.

And it's all thanks to Kurt, the best friend a lost and martyred girl could ask for.

_"…Thanks for putting Liz to bed, Mom…"_

And Grandmother, Mallorie in the back of everyone's mind.

She is feathery with age on the most uncomfortable chair closest to the fire.

She watches her son with such inexplicable fear.

Blaine wishes he didn't need her there.

Is our company all assembled? Then we shall begin.

_"…I had a hard time with my old Man. If he wasn't ignoring me he was shouting at me, if he wasn't shouting at me he was giving me orders or insulting me and if he wasn't doing that you had to keep your head down because then it was only a matter of time…"_

Go on Blaine, no pauses, no going back now.

You promised us a story and a story we shall have.

_"…He had a tell, when he was going to hurt me, not enough for me to get out, just enough for me to get ready. He used to put his hands behind his back – maybe to make it more dramatic when he grabbed me or punched me or whatever. Like this one time; he puts his hands behind him and then out of nowhere he jumps and he's got my hair and he's throwing me at the wall and he gets all wound up because his hands are covered in hair gel, all sticky and I don't know I'm laughing because I guess, there's nothing else to do when your mouths full of blood and you can't really breathe right. But he doesn't like that, my Dad, because I'm laughing … he kicks me and that's my red light because now he can't stop and – "_

Blaine's eyes get blinder and blinder.

The window glass has turned to liquid.

There is nothing outside but the rest of the world.

_"…We're at the top of the stairs and I'm thinking if I just leaned over I could fall and then die and then this wouldn't be happening. Except when I do fall it's not like that at all because I might be dead.. but I'm still bleeding and he's still beating me and I think that might be when I lost my tooth.. He's shouting at me like a – like an animal and I can't really hear him because everything's full of my heartbeat and it's scary because I can't feel him hit me anymore…"_

There is an echo in Blaine's story

A second voice that belongs to the child.

He has returned to that time, there is no need for the past tense.

Because the child is there.

_"…When I throw up, it's just so that I can start feeling again. I get sick to get rid of the huge thing inside me that's sucking up all my emotions. And then I start crying and I'm still bleeding everywhere and being sick a bit and it's like I'm going to be totally empty after he's done with me – nothing left of my body, nothing left inside…Damn it. I had to leave then, no choice, I told him I said; I'm done, while he was still crazy and hurting me and I think that must have slowed him down a bit. For a while and then he left and I slept on the floor…"_

His voice breaks with rage.

Rage is heavy.

When it falls, there is only pain.

_"…That's not it though, because if I had enough energy to pack my bags and try to leave then I wasn't broken enough for him. That morning he took his belt…he was mad because of all the blood…I was sick on the floor again and again…remember…no-one else home…oh Dad…"_

God help us.

The story is becoming fragmented – no wonder, if the story-teller is falling apart.

_"…Little bit of leather with all his strength in it – that belt telling me he hated me each and every time…everything red with MY blood…making me cry…making me sick…no Daddy, please, Daddy – I told him you're hurting me, I said you're going to kill me, I said don't hurt me – don't hurt me – don't hurt me!…blood everywhere…oh God where are you?…so much pain…Daddy please, don't you love me…why can't you love me? Why won't you stop? Why was there nobody there?"_

Blaine is a different person today – proud, strong.

A father himself, a husband.

A good and honest man.

But somewhere crouched inside him, rocking, begging, crying, is another Boy, one who feels the leather stripe of hate.

He is the voice in Blaine's ear, the weight that makes his bones so heavy, the song that makes his sleep so full of unrest.

He won't leave Blaine enough silence, enough space to grow and leave that hate behind him.

He still speaks,

_Don't hurt me…_

_Daddy, don't you love me…_

_Please…what is it…what have I done…_

_God help me…someone…_

_Please…anyone…_

_It hurts…oh God…_

_It hurts so much…_

_Please…_

Even now,

Just a whisper.

_**AN - Well, was it worth it? I'd a love a review to let me know *Puppy eyes***_


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